From Across the Ancient Waters (11 page)

“Oh pooh, Daddy,” Florilyn said with a laugh, “you don’t believe any of that.”

“What are you talking about, Flory?”

“That business of God taking care of his soul. You just pretend for the sake of what people will think. You go to church and sit there and make a pretense of paying attention. But I know you’re looking at your watch waiting for the boring sermon to end. The man on the beach is dead, and that’s all there is to it, don’t you mean? You don’t
really
think he’s still alive somewhere. Nobody believes that anymore.”

She had finally gone too far even for her father. The viscount’s superstitions toward matters of religion were deeply enough embedded that he dared not cross them. Whether there was anything to it all, he hadn’t a clue. But like many an unbelieving man of so-called religion, he saw no reason to take any chances.

A brief shudder coursed through him at the words that had just echoed about his table, as if his daughter’s audacity was tantamount to a curse against the gods and would bring retribution down upon them all. “Of course I do, Flory,” he replied, unaccountably ruffled by her perceptive assessment of his usual outlook of a Sunday morning.

“Then where is he, in heaven or hell?”

“How in blazes should I know? I’m no priest. I didn’t even know the man.”

“What do you think, Percy?” said Florilyn, turning and staring across the table with large, inquiring, devilish eyes. “You’re the son of a minister. You probably know all about such things.”

Taken by surprise, Percy had no leisure to prepare himself for suddenly finding himself on the spot.

Glad to be off it himself, this time his uncle did not rescue him.

“What do I think about what?” he said.

“Whether the dead man will go to heaven or hell.”

“I would say the same thing as Uncle Roderick—how should I know? I suppose it would depend on what he believed.”

“Do
you
think there’s a heaven and hell, Percy?” she asked, blinking her large eyes playfully several times with feigned sincerity.

“I don’t know. I suppose I don’t really know what I believe.”

“Doesn’t Uncle Edward preach about heaven and hell all the time?”

The question took Percy off guard. He found himself thinking a moment. “Actually,” he said slowly, “now that you mention it … no, he really doesn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him preach a sermon about heaven and hell.”

“What does he preach about then?”

“I don’t know … doing good, being nice … He’s always talking about doing what Jesus said. That’s one of his favorite phrases.”

“What does that mean? How can anyone do what Jesus said?” laughed Florilyn. “Why would anyone even want to?”

“I don’t know,” replied Percy a little testily. “I’m not claiming to know what it means. I’m just telling you what he says, that’s all.”

He suddenly found himself in the uncomfortably weird position of beginning to defend his father against his cousin’s nettlesome barbs. He didn’t like it. He had no interest in pursuing this line of conversation or being on the receiving end of his cousin’s irksome interrogation.

Without planning it, he turned to Florilyn’s brother at his right. “Who’s the chap you went hunting with?” he asked.

“Colville?” said Courtnenay. “He’s our neighbor.”

“Colville Burrenchobay,” added the viscount, relieved to have the opportunity to wrest the conversation away from his daughter. “His father owns the land adjacent to mine, northward.”

“I saw what looked like a castle when I was riding,” said Percy, “about two miles away, I would say.”

“That’s it.” His uncle laughed. “Burrenchobay Hall. Hardly a castle, but an imposing edifice indeed. Colville’s a year older than Courtenay. His father represents Gwynedd in parliament. But we try to forgive Trevelyan his odd politics. The boys grew up together. I doubt there’s a square inch between Blanau Ffestiniog and Barmouth you two lads haven’t explored together, wouldn’t you say, Courtenay?”

Courtnenay nodded.

“Well, if you’re the horseman Florilyn seems to think, Percy my boy,” the viscount went on, “I’m sure you will learn your way around the hills in no time. No better place in all the world to ride.”

“I ran into a fellow today with a flock of sheep,” said Percy. “But the horse didn’t seem to mind them.”

“You’ll find sheep everywhere in the fields and hills,” rejoined his uncle. “The horses ignore them. Who was he—did he tell you his name?”

“Yes … uh, let me see—Stevie … something like that, I think.”

“That’s Stevie Muir,” said Florilyn. “A big, ugly oaf if you ask me.”

“He seemed nice enough,” said Percy. “He invited me to visit him.”

“Oh, ick!” exclaimed Florilyn. “I wouldn’t set foot in that filthy cottage where he lives! All those poor people are so uncivilized. Their floors are nothing but dirt! Can you imagine how dirty everything must be? Ugh!”

At the end of the table, Katherine Westbrooke hardly tasted the food on her plate as the meal progressed. Listening to what came out of her daughter’s mouth was mortifying and humiliating to her sensitive mother’s ears. She excused herself with the pretext of a headache when the meal was over, declining coffee and dessert, and apologized to her brother’s son for her departure.

Westbrooke Manor

P
ercival, only son of Edward and Mary Drummond of Glasgow, had visited Westbrooke Manor but once prior to this in his life. That was so many years ago he scarcely remembered other than hazy recollections of the place. The last time he had seen his Welsh relatives was five years before in Scotland.

Lord Snowdon’s estate spread across the sloping incline up from the moorland plateau above the sea toward the inland hills. From the house, therefore, one could command a view of most of the region seaward, as well as north and south for some distance. Approaching the estate from the village, as one entered the front gate the great house could not actually be seen. A thick wood lay between the gate and the manor, comprised mostly of pine and fir, as well as magnificent specimens of ancient beech, oak, and chestnut.

The drive wound through these trees until it emerged suddenly into a vast clearing. This expanse spread out on both sides, still sloping gently upward. At the far end of it, the manor rose majestically, presiding over lawns and trees and hedges and gardens. A lovelier setting could hardly be imagined. As the drive approached the enormous house, it was lined with flowering ornamentals of plum and cherry and crab apple, at the bases of whose trunks grew all manner of bulbed and perennial flowers, low-spreading lithodora, and several varieties of heather.

Reaching Westbrooke Manor, the gravel drive widened into an expansive stoned elongated circle, around whose circumference exploded at this time of year a profusion of color, from roses and azaleas to multicolored pansies, alyssum, lobelia, violets, violas, daisies, and an abundance of other blooming things, scattered and planted among one another seemingly heedless of pattern. Their diverse colors and foliage mixed and flowed together in chaotic beauty. In the middle of winter, the sight would not have been nearly so inviting. But in early June, it was a sumptuous feast for the eyes.

The house itself—of gray stone and slate, intermingled with red brick from England, here and there with iron and copper work accenting the colorful mosaic of its design—stood as an impressively beautiful estate, whose draftsman must surely have enjoyed himself. Originally constructed in the late sixteenth century after union with England had reduced the defensive requirements of the castles and great houses of Wales, Westbrooke Manor represented one of the oldest and largest such structures where aesthetics and functionality replaced solemnity and starkness as the paramount architectural concerns.

The front face—opening southward and with columned entryway inset from the remaining plane of the building—and west wing boasted perhaps more windows, larger and of unusual design, than any mansion in Wales. These afforded magnificent views, when weather permitted, of the entire coastline. The architect must surely have cherished a particular fondness for the ornamental potential of the openings he set among the stone walls of the massive building. Its windows were the eyes into the soul, if not of Westbrooke Manor’s present occupants, then surely into the man who conceived it. They were clearly the singular visual highlight of the place.

The manor’s windows represented enormous variety of size, shape, and framing material. No more than three were alike. Even these possessed tiny crafted individualities that revealed themselves only to the most diligent scrutiny. While the primary object had been to give the manor’s inhabitants a view outward, this unique architectural feature also granted the visitor a striking sight as he beheld the house upon approach.

Great double doors of solid oak planking three inches thick, each measuring four feet in width and eight in height, ornately framed and studded in black wrought iron, were overspread with a great stone plate upon which the Westbrooke coat of arms was carved. This was surrounded by miscellaneous heraldic symbols, swords, and roaring and leaping beasts from both the world of men and fairy.

Away from this entryway around to the left along the west wing and extending northward behind it, a rambling, curved mossy stone pathway led toward an area near the house, which from the position of the house relative to the sun, remained shady during most daylight hours. Among the trunks of spaciously placed sycamores, beeches, and chestnuts, grew a distinctive variety of ferns and other plants, mostly now showing off their thick foliage of green. This was the winter garden. Those of its contents that flowered—only perhaps a fourth of the whole—had been placed here for their wintry blossoms, which came into prominence when the deciduous giants above them dropped their leaves to let in the cold, thin light of the winter months.

The oak doors of the manor opened into a large hall of high ceiling. Around its tall wood-paneled walls hung guns, swords, stags’ heads, a few faded tartans, and other similar ornamentation. The effect gave a visitor at first glance more the appearance of a hunting lodge in the Scottish highlands than a family home. Full-length suits of armor stood opposite one another as silent sentinels guarding the two far corners. Two corridors extended from this entryway, one to the right and one to the left. Directly ahead a wide stairway swooped down, slightly curved though not circular, from above.

Most of the family’s more comfortable living quarters were located up this grand staircase and to the left, on the first floor of the west wing, whose windows overlooked the sea. There was no limit to parlors and drawing rooms in the west wing of the ground floor either. The kitchens and servants’ quarters occupied most of the area to the right of the entry hall, comprising the remainder of the main south wing and the small east wing.

Two dining rooms, a great formal banquet hall outfitted in paneling and wainscoting to resemble the hunting motif, and a smaller room, warmer of atmosphere and of floral tones, sat directly to the rear of the entry hall. It was in this latter where the family’s meals were taken. Both dining rooms looked out on the courtyard enclosed by the three wings of the manor, kept tidily manicured by the viscount’s gardener, Stuart Wykeham. A breakfast room of immaculate white walls and ceiling and black floor tile also faced the courtyard.

The second floor of the manor sat mostly unused now except for a multitude of bedrooms and storage rooms, the viscount’s private study, and an ancient armory in which he took special pleasure.

Roderick Westbrooke had not always prided himself in being master of the family estate. His father, the seventh viscount Lord Snowdon, was already old when Roderick was born and was dead before his only son reached his teen years. Whatever family fortune might once have existed, it had been unwisely invested, spent, squandered, and gradually used up in the generations prior to the present viscount’s life.

Nor did young Roderick help matters with regard to his own financial future by leaving Wales in 1830 at sixteen as a pampered aristocratic heir intent upon seeing the world, ostensibly, he said, to seek what he called his fortune. In reality all he succeeded in accomplishing was to dry up what remained of the stipend guaranteed him by his father’s will until he should come of age at twenty-five and inherit the title and property that went with it.

He was gone for five years—traveled extensively on the continent, remained a consequential year in Ireland, and returned under somewhat mysterious circumstances to Wales at twenty-one, virtually penniless and peculiarly dispassionate according to those who had known him before. At the same time, however, he was no more at peace with himself. Something ate at him. But he confided in no one.

One thing was clear upon his return—Roderick Westbrooke was a boy no longer, though still four years from becoming master of the estate. Whether he was older and wiser from his voyages, adventures, and amorous escapades or merely older would require the rest of his life to determine. His mother remained trustee of the estate until he inherited at twenty-five.

He met the wealthy daughter of the Glasgow earl in 1845 when in the northern seaport on a minor matter of business. On the surface, they made an odd match—he the thirty-one-year-old man of the world, she eight years younger, well-educated but untraveled, and the daughter of an earl whose chief reputation lay in his unconventional religious views. That the religious family possessed money added in no small measure to the attractive young Katherine Drummond’s charm in Roderick Westbrooke’s eyes. Yet in fairness to his motives, she did cause his heart to beat with something resembling affection again, and he persuaded himself that he loved her. Katherine, on her part, found the nobleman from western Wales more dashing than he really was. Like many young women, she did not inquire too deeply into his character beyond what appeared on the surface. She convinced herself that she was in love with him, which she probably was, however unwise that love may have been. They were married two years later.